"Change doctors," he shot back
without hesitation. "I was told that once, when I was, like,
sixteen. Sonny Stitt came to St. Louis, right? And he had his hair
straightened. He showed me how to do it, did it for me. My hair was
wet. I was running around trying to be hip, right? So then I had to
come back all across town to go home. I got sick. Went to the
hospital. The doctor said, 'What, you play the trumpet? You can't do
that any more.' If I'd listened to him, I'd be a dentist today. Isn't
that a bitch?"

Miles was not exactly healthy to begin
with, the rest was self-inflicted. He went in and out of surgery for
sickle-cell anaemia, banged up his Lamborghini ("Shit! Both
ankles"), had an ulcer, bouts of insomnia (the coke didn't help),
polyps were removed from his vocal cords. After a hip operation (Miles
was so hip, he even had hip operations) forced him into a wheelchair,
he insisted on being wheeled from limousine to boarding ramp after he
was loping around stages like a gazelle. "That's just Miles being
princely," his guitar player explained.

Miles was famous
for turning his back on audience. I asked why he did that.

He
lowered his head and stared up at me, glowering with narrowed menacing
eyes, grinding his mouth like there was gum in it which there wasn't.
Miles loved to play the devil, although I always thought it was just
that - a game. When a woman once came up to him and said, "Mr
Davis, I love your music,"he leered: "Wanna fuck?" (She
did not think that was funny.) Now he hissed to me: "Nobody asks
a symphony orchestra conductor why he turns his back on the audience."
After 1970, when his "rock" period began with "Jack
Johnson" and "Bitches Brew," Miles took to standing in
the middle of his bubblibg cauldron of binary electronic avant garde
exploration on the cutting edge of distortion, signaling tempo and
dynamic changes with an implied wave of his green trumpet or a pointed
finger. At the same time, he denied the existence of signals: "The
music just does what it's supposed to do."

His most
musical as well as commercial collaboration was with the older white
arranger/composer Gil Evans, a father figure to Miles. On their albums
together - which were, well, symphonic - Miles was at the height of
his power. He was like a violin soloist playing a concerto with Gil's
big band. Their "Sketches of Spain" was a big hit. Gil said:
"Miles is not afraid of what he likes. A lot of other musicians
are constantly looking around to what the next person is doing,
wondering what's in style. Miles goes his own way."

Now
there was a silence in the suite on top of the Hotel
Concorde-Lafayette. When you're with Miles Davis, silence is not
exactly silent. There was a palpable vibe in the air. He went on
happily drawing away. Miles taught me whatever I know about silence,
apparently not enough. I grew paranoid. I blamed myself for the
conversational stagnation. I was the journalist, I needed a question -
fast. Make me sound intelligent. Whatever came to mind: "Do you
still practice?"

He had finished another drawing. He
drew the way he once smoked and snorted - compulsively. Perhaps it was
drug-substitute gratification. He turned it around, showed it to me
and said: "Yeah. Practice every day. People know me by my sound,
like they know Frank Sinatra's sound. Got to keep my sound. I practice
seventh chords. Practicing is like praying. You don't just pray once a
week."

"Do you pray?" "I was on a
plane once and all of a sudden it dropped. I had this medal Carlos
Santana gave me around my neck. It has a diamond and a ruby and a
picture of some Saint on it. I touched it. I think that
thing saved me. Well, just say I pray in my way."

Jazz
festivals will come to be divided into pre- and post-Miles Davis eras.
For 20 years from 1971, Miles lent credibility to the rock backbeat.
(He opened for The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane at The
Fillmore.) His presence continued to hover, providing a sort of tacit
legitimacy for rock bands on jazz stages. After his death in the Fall
of 1991, it has become more difficult to rationalize. Miles did not
play rock for the money. He was in search of communication, or, at
worst, the fountain of youth. Sure, he wanted a large audience. He was
no loser. But anything Miles touched can be defined as jazz, like
Louis Armstrong. Now we're stuck with the youth without the fountain.

During
the summer 1991 jazz festival season, Miles did something he said he
would never do - look back. He led an all-star assortment of
ex-employees - Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Jackie
McClean, John McLaughlin, etcetera - in Paris. Quincy Jones conducted
Miles soloing with a big band performing "Sketches of Spain"
in Montreux. 'I cannot help but wonder," I wrote on the front
page of the International Herald Tribune, "if this unexpected
flurry of nostalgia at the age of 65 is some sort of last roundup."
That same summer, Jack Lang awarded him the Legion of Honor. I wrote:
"It seems somehow like final punctuation." Later, I realized
that I had written his obituary two months early, which really spooked
me. Because I also wrote: "Miles Davis is playing the soundtrack
for the movie of my life and when he stops, the movie's over."

Well,
I'm still here. But life post-Miles is not easy. There is nobody to
remind us of the importance of personal sound and silence. The silent
sounds of "Tutu," recorded in the late 80s, reflect the best
of our contemporary urban experience - a peaceful garden in the middle
of a pulluted city, a warm café in winter, the metro when it is
not on strike, walking streets, a friendly taxi driver, tree-lined
empty boulevards at dawn. It has become much harder to ignore all the
noise.

Miles was a regular at the "Grande Parade du Jazz"
in Nice. Neighborly noise considerations forced a midnight curfew.
When the stage manager waved off the band ten minutes early, Miles was
furious. He wanted those ten minutes. He brought the band back until
midnight on-the-nose. Money making as an art form involves doing what
you want to do anyway even without the money.

Miles was also
a master of the art of Good Publicity. His sparring with Wynton
Marsalis in the press was a good example. Marsalis is the leader of
the under-30 generation of tradition and blues-oriented players which
has installed itself as the immediate future. It can be called a
movement. They build on the past and one day may leap into the future.

Right
now; though, most of them sound like other, mostly dead, people. They
are intelligent, clean-living and highly specialized technocrats.
Marsalis secured his influence on them through his post as Director of
the Lincoln Center jazz program at just about the time Miles Davis
died. There was a void, although I beg to differ with those who
consider Marsalis to be Miles' heir. Marsalis is not "cursed"
by change, and he has yet to learn the value of silence.

Marsalis
accused Miles of deserting "true" jazz by playing rock.
Miles accused Marsalis of ditto for playing European classical music.
Back and forth, taking one to know one. Miles said: "Wynton is
just doing a press number, which he is always doing. Music shouldn't
be like two gladiators fighting."

Which of course made a
great press number. Miles was photographed giving Wynton one of his
drawings. They were both smiling like two heavyweights promoting a
championship match.

*

So as we ride away into the sunset towards the future of jazz,
we remember the words of the Prince of Silence: "When I'm not
playing music, I'm thinking about it. I think about it all the time,
when I'm eating, swimming, drawing, there's music in my head right now
talking to you. I don't like the word jazz which white folks dropped
on us. And I don't play rock. I make the kind of music the day
recommends."